This poet had no chance to prove what poetry of his would have endured the long day, and most of all he needed to be removed from too much love of everything. The best art cannot endure such promiscuity, not an art of specific individual worth. In the book which is called "Letters from America", the attraction lies in its preface, despite the so noticeable irrelevancy of style. It seems to me that James might for once have condescended to an equal footing with his theme, for the sake of the devoutness of his intention, and have come to us for the moment, the man talking of the youth. He might then have told us something really intimate of "Rupert", as he so frequently names him, for this would indicate some intimacy surely, unless perchance he was "Rupert" to the innumerables whom he met, and who were sure of his intimacy on the instant's introduction, which would indeed be "condemned to sociability". This book is in two pieces, preface and content, and we are conscious chiefly of the high style and interest of the preface, first of all, and the discrepancy inherent in the rest of the book accentuating the wide divergence between praiser and praised. It is James with reference to Brooke, it is not Henry James informing of the young and handsome Rupert Brooke. Apollo in the flesh must do some mighty singing. Brooke had not done much of this when they laid him by on the borders of that farther sea. He had more to prove the heritage laid so heavily upon him by the unending host of his admirers and lovers. He needed relief from the popular notion, and we must relieve ourselves from his excessive popularity if we are to enjoy him rightly, by being just with him. A little time, and we should have learned his real distinction. It is too soon for us, and too late for him. We must accept him more for his finer indications then, and less for his achievement in the sense of mastery. THE DEARTH OF CRITICS There is just cause for wonder at the noticeable absence of critics in the field of painting, of individuals who are capable of some serious approach to the current tendencies in art. We have witnessed a very general failure to rise above the common or high-class reportorial level in this particular sphere. Why do so many people who write specifically about painting say so little that really relates to it? It is because most of them are journalists or men of letters who have made emotional excursions into this field, which is in most instances foreign to them; well-known literary artists, occasionally, intent upon varying their subject matter.